UChicago to compete in computer programming World Finals next June

December 13, 2013

The University of Chicago will advance to the World Finals of the Association for Computing Machinery’s International Collegiate Programming Contest for the sixth year in a row. This year’s World Finals will take place June 22 to 26, 2014, in Ekaterinburg, Russia.

The UChicago team, “Conjurers of Cheap Tricks,” consists of Jeremy Archer, second-year in computer science; Jake Koenig, second-year in mathematics; and Harrison Weigel, third-year in mathematics and computer science. The team qualified for the World Finals Nov. 2 by placing second of 128 teams competing in the ACM/ICPC Mid-Central USA regional contest. Only 120 teams out of nearly 10,000 worldwide earn the distinction of competing at the World Finals.

The team coach is Borja Sotomayor, MS’07, PhD’10, associate director for technology in the master’s program in computer science and lecturer in computer science. At last July’s World Finals in St. Petersburg, Russia, Sotomayor received the Coach Award from ICPC and IBM for coaches who have brought a team to the finals for five or more years.

The assistant coach is Denis Pankratov, a doctoral student in computer science who competed in the 2011 World Finals as a member of UChicago’s Works in Theory team.

UChicago’s Department of Computer Science annually sends teams to the Mid-Central USA regional contest, and previously competed in the World Finals in 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2002 and 2001.

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The University of Chicago’s Borja Sotomayor (standing forward at far right) received the Coach Award at the 2013 World Finals of the Association for Computing Machinery’s International Collegiate Programming Contest last summer in St. Petersburg, Russia. Sotomayor will lead his sixth UChicago programming team to the World Finals next June in Ekaterinburg, Russia.